Tag Archives: competition

I happened to find this short film on Film Riot’s channel via Youtube, and thought it looked interesting, and decided to check it out.

This is an action movie with ambiguity of the underlying premise of the story. However, overall, I thought that this film was good, considering that it was a low budget film.

Many of the fight scenes were nailed, and realistic. The acting [outside of dialogue] was fantastic from all the actors, except for the antagonist. I didn’t think that the part of this particular antagonist fit the natural personality of person who played the character. However, it was still above mediocre.

Cliche would be a word that would be commonly tossed around if there was a discussion circle about this film. Especially with the antagonist. His mannerisms and actions were too cliche, and not original [in my opinion]. However, the protagonist lived up to the stereotype that if they don’t talk, they mean business. I always heard growing up that the people that talk the most smack is usually not someone that can physically get the job done, but that common thought was put aside in this film. The protagonist did a good job with the acting, and the actions. However, the dialogue [small amount] that the person did for this was slightly less intimidating when his voice was heard. His voice was not intimidating enough. When I’m thinking about a film like this, Liam Neeson’s voice resonates through my mind, and is projected onto the character.

Yes, the antagonist has to have the upper hand in order to give the protagonist something to overcome, but the voice and intensity of the protagonist is what causes the loss of credibility to me on this film. However, like I said, the actions were very good.

The gun shots, and the special effects were [in my opinion] less than mediocre. I suppose that they would pass for a low-budget film. However, this is not something that would win major awards in my opinion. Hand-to-hand combat was brilliant, and the moves were fantastic. It was intense, and that had a lot to do with the camera angles, and the hand-held shots as well. Very nice.

I think that the choice of dialogue from both the protagonist and the antagonist could have been better thought out. Some of the things that were said were the climax that music built up to, but was an extreme let down. It was as if some parts wanted to max out climatically, but were not intense enough, and were not said well enough to give it the full climatic effect that they [I assume] were going for.

My friend John Wachs and myself decided to take part in University of Alabama’s CMF [Campus Moviefest] competition. Unlike every other group that competed, we only used two people behind the camera. I wrote the script, and did the sound while John was behind the camera and did the lights.

I thought that we would be the underdogs. Every other group seemed to have more people involved with more experience. John stayed very confident all the way through though at times I was sort of discouraged [being that this was my first ever project that would be on film]. We pulled off a fantastic film in less than 72 hours, and had to have it turned in [we only had 6 days to get production and post production done].

We showed up the night of the reveal of the top 16 out of the 157 groups that competed. We didn’t have many supporters show up to the reveal unlike many other groups. They revealed the top 16 films… and we MADE IT! At that moment, it was a complete relief and encouragement that we had done at least better than most of the groups. We must have done something correct.

At the end of the reveal, they gave out awards, and three of the films would go on to Hollywood for the next step of competition. We did not receive best comedy, picture, or drama. However, John got the directors award, and we were admitted into the Black Warrior Film Festival that represents all of the Southeast in Birmingham, Alabama.

We were informed that night that the video that receives the most views will also get admitted into the Hollywood competition—to show some “democracy”. This is John and I’s dream to be able to have a film featured in Hollywood and be able to make a trip out there to see how the business works and to get some useful contacts.

I say all of that to say this: please support us, and help us get the most views. We were truly the underdogs, and I couldn’t be more proud of the five people that were involved in this short film. Please take some time to watch and SHARE this film. We are shooting for 2,500-3,000 views within the next three weeks.